Box Rolls Out New and Improved iOS App

Just yesterday I was writing about how much the Box app on my iPad helps make the Apple tablet better. With the proverbial ink not yet dry on that post, today Box is launching new and improved iOS app that make it an even more valuable--possibly indispensible--tool for the iPhone and iPad.

I was already a fan of Box, and avid user of the iPhone and iPad app, but the features added in the new version make Box a must-have

Just yesterday I was writing about how much the Box app on my iPad helps make the Apple tablet better. With the proverbial ink not yet dry on that post, today Box is launching new and improved iOS app that make it an even more valuable--possibly indispensible--tool for the iPhone and iPad.

With the launch of iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S, Box offered iOS users 50GB of cloud storage for life (a promotion it recently repeated in partnership with LG for its Android mobile devices). As a result of that incentive, more than a million iPhone and iPad users are now using the Box app on their devices, and using Box online storage to be able to access and share files from anywhere.

As great as the old Box app is, it has its limitations. It doesn't let you upload new content, and it doesn't have a simple way to find what you're looking for among the gigabytes of content stored on Box. The new app fixes that.

With the new Box app, you can create new folders, and you can upload photos or videos directly from your iPhone or iPad to Box. Actually, you can take photos or shoot videos directly from the Box app, or you can add existing content already on the iPhone or iPad.

It's not as seamlessly automatic as Apple's iCloud Photo Stream feature, but it allows for both photos and videos and provides much greater flexibility for cross-platform viewing, and sharing with others. Box explains in an Inside the Box blog post, "Certain workers, like those on a construction site, can use this feature to update the home office instantly with images of site progress."

In addition, the new Box iOS app adds full-text search capabilities. Navigating through folders looking for a specific file from a year ago is a pain. The search feature quickly sifts through all of your Box content and find the data you're looking for more efficiently.

Box also enhanced the offline functionality of the app. You can mark individual files, or entire folders as Favorites, and that data is stored locally for offline access even if there is no Internet connection available.

What I like about Box is that it makes my data accessible. It doesn't matter if I am using my iPhone, iPad, Motorola Xoom, Windows 7 laptop, or MacBook Air--I can get my data from virtually anywhere, any time. The new features in the iPhone and iPad app just make it that much better, and make it a must-have tool that I highly recommend for users working on the go from their mobile devices.